The Science of Fast ForWord

Fast ForWord combines cognitive research -- the science of how we learn -- with neuroscience -- specifically the opportunities for change presented by brain plasticity.
More on Fast ForWord origins here

It used to be thought that the development of a student's learning mechanism occurred in the first three years of life. We now know that while change is more difficult after this early period, that the window for building fundamental cognitive skills remains open through-out life. This means improved learning is always possible. The hard part is isolating the skills needing improvement and finding ways to exercise them so that they will strengthen.

Fast ForWord uses the neuroscience principles of frequency, intensity and shaping -- improvements in tiny, incremental steps -- to activate new regions of the brain.   If an exercise improves a sensory input (e.g., auditory sound quality) the brain will re-organize to take advantage of this better information.  The process of reorganization leads to the new neural connection, new areas of brain activity.
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New Neural Connections

Every Gemm student experiences some version of the "activation" shown in the fMRI picture -- moving videos taken of the brain in action.

This activation is significant and amazing!  Most struggling readers under-use language areas of the brain, because the quality of their language input, their word memory, is poor and so it is not useful.  This why reading is hard for them because reading is language skill -- spoken language in a different form.  Instead these readers become visual, scanning the text for memorized words, etc.

The magic of Fast ForWord software is that it has found a way to accurately exercise auditory processing. This helps the brain hear the phonemes (sounds) inside words -- a clearer word memory makes reading much more natural.  The new activity seen on the fMRI is the brain self-organizing creating new neural pathways to incorporate this new word memory accuracy into its reading process!

In this elegant way, Fast ForWord helps struggling reading brains reorganize and create the same neural pathways used by good readers.  Change is possible every time with every brain.  Fast ForWord is research based, clinically proven and road tested.

Another Way to Look At How ForWord Helps Reading

The Problem. Good reading requires accurate listening. For children who hear every sound in every word, reading is simply a matter of transposing language to a new format using their ABC's. But, for those with a limited or muddy speech vocabulary, reading is like being confronted with a whole new language.

Fast ForWord's Idea The most common cause of poor listening accuracy is that the brain does not process quite fast enough to discriminate between sounds, or at least not with the ease and accuracy required for comfortable reading. Fast ForWord's concept was simple. Athletes build strength through repetition with increasing difficulty. When you teach a child to hit a baseball you start slow then speed-up. Why not teach the brain to listen more accurately the same way?

Science Applied. Fast ForWord is really a slow pitch machine for the brain. It strengthens cognitive skills by starting out at the student's current skill level and then in tiny increments, adding speed and complexity. The brain is self-organizing. Just as every muscle will respond to exercise, every brain will respond to Fast ForWord, providing it can access (function at) the starting point.

No other reading software program tackles reading quite like this. About 88% of reading issues stem from the cognitive weaknesses, most which Fast ForWord address -- memory, attention, processing or sequencing -- using this adaptive approach.